The second trial was announced at dawn.
We gathered in the arena, the surviving three thousand candidates a noticeably thinner crowd than before. Faces were pale. Eyes were hollow. The Chamber of Echoes had done its work, and many who'd passed looked like they wished they hadn't.
Headmaster Thalion appeared on a floating platform above us, his ancient voice carrying without effort.
"Congratulations on surviving the Chamber. You have faced yourselves and endured. Now you will face each other."
A wave of his hand, and thousands of small, glowing cards descended from above, each finding its way to a candidate. Mine landed in my palm—warm, slightly humming.
"Your second trial is the Gauntlet of the Forgotten. You will enter the Academy's artificial dungeon in parties of five. Your objective: reach the deepest chamber and retrieve a Memory Shard—a fragment of the dungeon's core. The first fifty parties to succeed will advance. All others will be eliminated."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
"Your parties have been randomly assigned. The cards in your hands show your party number and the names of your companions. You have one hour to find them and prepare. The dungeon opens at noon."
I looked at my card.
Party 147
Members:
· Roy White (Support Mage)
· Vance Hartwell (Flame Knight)
· Mira Vane (Silent Blade)
· Dorn Ironfist (Berserker)
· Elara Moss (Cleric)
Vance Hartwell. The flame-armored boy from the registration line. The one who'd mocked me, then panicked at the sight of Eve Snowfall.
Of course.
---
Finding my party took forty minutes.
Vance was easy—he was holding court near the arena's east entrance, surrounded by hangers-on who'd somehow survived the first trial. When I approached, his face cycled through several expressions: recognition, confusion, annoyance, and finally resignation.
"You," he said.
"Me."
He looked at my card, then his. A muscle twitched in his jaw. "Fine. Who else?"
We found Dorn Ironfist at the bottom of the candidate list—literally. He'd written his name on a scrap of paper and pinned it to the board, then fallen asleep against the wall beneath it. He was massive, even sitting, with arms like tree trunks and a shaved head covered in old scars. When Vance kicked his boot, he woke with a snort that could have been a bear.
"Wuh? Party? Yeah, sure, let's go." He stood, towering over us, and grinned. "Dorn. I hit things. You point, I hit."
Elara Moss found us. She was small, mousy, with hands that trembled slightly and eyes that darted everywhere at once. A cleric's robe hung loose on her frame.
"I'm Elara," she whispered. "I heal. I mean, I try to heal. I'm better at it when no one's bleeding at me. Please don't bleed at me."
Vance looked at me. I looked at Vance. Dorn looked confused.
Mira Vane was the last to arrive, and she arrived like a shadow—one moment not there, the next leaning against the wall behind us. She was thin, pale, with dark hair that hid most of her face and eyes that held no expression at all. A short sword hung at her hip, well-used but plain.
"Mira." Her voice was flat. "I stab things. Quietly."
We stood in a loose circle, five strangers with nothing in common but a card and a deadline.
Vance broke the silence first. "This is a disaster. A plant mage, a mute assassin, a berserker who can't read, a cleric who's afraid of blood, and me—the only real fighter in the group." He threw his hands up. "We're going to die in the first room."
Dorn scratched his head. "First room sounds bad. Can we skip it?"
Elara whimpered.
Mira said nothing.
I looked at each of them. The arrogant noble, the quiet killer, the simple brute, the terrified healer. And me—the trashy side character with a secret.
"We're not going to die," I said.
Vance snorted. "And you know this how?"
"Because I've survived worse with less." I met his eyes. "You're a good fighter. Dorn can take hits. Mira can handle threats before they become problems. Elara can keep us standing if nothing scares her too badly. And I..." I paused, choosing my words carefully. "I make plants do things they shouldn't."
Vance stared at me. Then, slowly, he laughed—a real laugh, not the mocking one from before.
"Fine. We're probably still going to die, but at least it'll be interesting." He stuck out his hand. "Truce. For the dungeon."
I shook it. Dorn's hand enveloped all of ours. Elara touched her fingers to the pile nervously. Mira just watched.
Party 147 was, technically, a team.
---
The Gauntlet of the Forgotten was a labyrinth of stone corridors, magical traps, and wandering monsters—all created and maintained by the Academy's enchanters. We entered through a massive iron door that sealed behind us with a boom that echoed into darkness.
The first hour was tense but manageable. Mira scouted ahead, her movements so silent I lost her twice. She'd return with reports: "Three goblins around the next corner. Trap on the floor—pressure plate. Empty room, but the walls have holes."
Vance handled the goblins with flashy fire magic that made Elara flinch but got the job done. Dorn walked through the pressure plate trap after Mira disabled it, because "traps are for sneaky people, not me." Elara healed a scratch on Vance's arm and then looked like she might faint.
And I... I watched. I listened. I learned.
The dungeon was alive with plant life—moss on the walls, fungi in the corners, roots pushing through cracks in the stone. Nothing magical, nothing special. But they were there, and they could feel us.
By the second hour, I'd mapped the dungeon's living network in my mind. I knew which corridors had been recently traversed (the moss was bruised). I knew where water dripped (follow the fungi). I knew which rooms held monsters (the roots avoided them).
I didn't tell the others. Not yet. Trust was a fragile thing, and I wasn't ready to test it.
---
The first real test came in the third hour.
We entered a large chamber—clearly a former guard room, now filled with old bones and the musty smell of decay. At its center, a chest sat on a pedestal, humming with obvious magical energy.
"Too easy," Mira said. Her first words in hours.
"Obviously a trap," Vance agreed. "But the Memory Shard could be inside."
Dorn started walking toward it. I grabbed his arm.
"Wait."
He looked down at me, confused. "But treasure."
"Trap," I said. "Watch."
I reached out with my awareness, touching the roots that snaked through the chamber's floor. They were wrong—twisted, corrupted, pulsing with a dark energy that made my skin crawl. I followed them to their source: a patch of floor just before the chest.
Something waited beneath it. Something large. Something hungry.
"There's a burrowing predator under that stone," I said quietly. "When someone steps on it, it will attack."
Vance frowned. "How do you know?"
I met his eyes. "I told you. I make plants do things they shouldn't. I can also feel when they're wrong."
He stared at me for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Mira. Can you get to the chest without touching that stone?"
She studied the chamber, her eyes tracing paths across the walls, the ceiling, the scattered debris. "Maybe. If I go along the wall, use the old torches as handholds..."
"Do it."
She moved. It was like watching water flow—inevitable, silent, perfect. She reached the chest, opened it carefully, and extracted a small, glowing crystal.
The moment the crystal left the chest, the floor erupted.
A massive worm—pale, segmented, ringed with teeth—burst from beneath the stone, its maw opening wide enough to swallow Dorn whole. It thrashed blindly, seeking the thing that had stolen its treasure.
Mira was already moving, leaping from the chest to a broken pillar to the wall, the crystal clutched to her chest. The worm turned, following her movement.
"Kill it!" Vance's flames erupted, splashing against the worm's hide. They burned, but not fast enough. Dorn charged, his massive fist slamming into the creature's side. It barely flinched.
Elara screamed and hid behind me.
I reached out with my awareness, touching the roots I'd sensed earlier. They were part of the worm—its connection to the dungeon, its feeding network. I couldn't hurt the creature directly, but I could hurt its food.
*"Rot," * I whispered. *"Decay. Close the veins." *
The roots convulsed. They blackened, withered, died. The worm shuddered, its movements growing sluggish as its connection to the dungeon's life force was severed.
Vance's flames caught. The worm thrashed once more, then collapsed.
Silence.
Mira landed beside us, the crystal glowing in her hands. "We have it."
Vance stared at me. "What did you do?"
"I told you. Plants."
He didn't push. None of them did.
But I saw the looks they exchanged—the reassessments, the recalibrations. I was no longer just the "plant mage" or the "support kid."
I was something else. Something they didn't fully understand.
For now, that was enough.
---